Connie's Chronicles: Christmas in the Philippines . . .

It has been strange to celebrate one of my favorite holidays with no snow!!! It is hard to get into the Christmas season when everything is green and temperatures are in the 70s and low 80s! But we managed to have a great Christmas!!

On Dec. 17th we attended a dinner in honor of some of the District and Stake President's in our mission. It was fun to visit with each of them and get to know them. We played the white elephant game, but I think everyone was afraid to hurt feelings by taking gifts. Pictures were taken of each couple . . . here we are

We had two Christmas Zone Conferences, Dec 20 and 21, where all of the Senior Couples attended. Each Zone was given 10 minutes to put on a skit. Since we were all looking for "Miracles in December" (miracles in the way of baptisms) allot of the skits centered around that. It was nice to see all of the missionaries in the two days.

Here are some of the pictures taken at both conferences.

The Senior Couples also preformed on the program. We sang "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth". We all blacked out our two front teeth and sang the song. It was pretty funny!

Elder Jewkes didn't want to put masking taper over
his teeth, thus the sign "Black Teeth"

Sister Martino was the curtain . . .

Then we all sang the "12 Days of Christmas" and told what each of the twelve items represented. ( you can check out this website for more info http://www.byrum.org/misc/christmas/origin.html It may only be an urban legend, but it makes some sense as to why we sing about a partridge in a pear tree!)

Sister Martino had a game where you made antlers from a
panty hose and balloons. It was fun to watch and then see the
creations that were made.
Here are the Senior Elders and Sisters doing their part . . .